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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 03/24/95 -- Vol. 13, No. 39
MEETINGS UPCOMING:
Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are in Middletown 5T-415
Wednesdays at noon.
DATE TOPIC
03/29/95 Video: Science in STAR TREK
04/19/95 Book: LE MORTE D'ARTHUR by Thomas Malory
05/10/95 Book: TBA
Outside events:
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the second
Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call 201-933-2724 for
details. The New Jersey Science Fiction Society meets on the third
Saturday of every month in Belleville; call 201-432-5965 for details.
However, the March meeting has been moved to the fourth Saturday, and
the April meeting *may* be moved to the fourth Saturday as well.
MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3F-434 908-957-5619 m.r.leeper@att.com
HO Chair: John Jetzt MT 2E-530 908-957-5087 j.j.jetzt@att.com
HO Co-Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 908-949-7076 n.j.sauer@att.com
HO Co-Librarian: Lance Larsen HO 2C-318 908-949-4156 l.f.larsen@att.com
MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3F-434 908-957-5619 m.r.leeper@att.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist:
Rob Mitchell MT 2D-536 908-957-6330 r.l.mitchell@att.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-337 908-957-2070 e.c.leeper@att.com
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
1. Next week's meeting (March 29) is a return to those video
meetings that all you couch potatoes love so well. This one is the
one-hour PBS documentary "Science and Star Trek," which talks about
a scientific concept (such as the transporter) as used in the
series, and then has scientists talking about the possibilities in
real life. [-ecl]
===================================================================
THE MT VOID Page 2
2. Every once in a while you read something that really knocks the
slats out from under you. You go through life, you form your
opinions of the way things are or were in the past. Those get
firmed up and then you read something that totally cracks the
foundations and it takes you a while actually to adjust to it.
Last Friday's New York Times (March 17, 1995) has on the front page
a story that is a real jaw-dropper. It is the stuff of alternate
history stories, but it also indicates that our own view of the end
of World War II needs considerable revision.
My interpretation of the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan
was that it was to forestall a protracted invasion that the
Japanese would have resisted even though the war itself was really
lost. I think that is a standard interpretation. The
justification has been that the bomb would have saved Japanese as
well as American lives in the long run. The article in the New
York Times indicates that the decision to go to nuclear weapons may
have been a lot smarter, or luckier, than we have generally
thought.
This story starts out with some incredibly harrowing accounts of
Japanese medical experiments on captured Chinese and others in
occupied territories. In themselves they make for quite a story.
But I am almost sorry that it starts out with these since while
they are important enough as they are, some people give up on the
article right there without seeing where it is going. The real
meat of the article (or let's say the meatiest part) comes later.
The point of these experiments was the development of biological
weapons, plague bombs, that were to have been launched against the
U.S. mainland September 11, 1945. If this is true it means by
thirty-six days the Japanese lost the race to unleash superweapons.
The bombs were to have been carried by balloons, a technique that
had already been used to drop explosives on the U.S. mainland. (I
hadn't known that they had successfully bombed the U.S. mainland
either, though the damage was apparently small.) The article
contends that much as the military did with the German rocket
program veterans, when the fighting was over the people who worked
on this project were given immunity in exchange for cooperation in
transferring the technology to us. This in spite of horrendous war
crimes committed in developing the weapons.
All this comes (suspiciously) close to the wake of two
controversies, one over the exhibition of the Enola Gay at the
Smithsonian, one over a proposed postage stamp commemorating the
development of nuclear weapons during WWII. It is unclear how
effectively the Japanese could have deployed the weapons they are
now alleged to have created. But it is not clear that even matters
in evaluating the morality of the decision to go to nuclear
weapons. Even if from hindsight it can be determined that the
Japanese weapons might not have been effective, the decision to go
nuclear was made in wartime against an enemy preparing to use
THE MT VOID Page 3
biological weapons. This is one of the rare instances in which
even the use of nuclear weapons seems--to me at least--justifiable.
It also gives rise to much speculation how history might have been
very different if the nuclear missions had been held up as little
as thirty-six days. [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. Answer to last week's riddle: The book that you never read the
last third of, in fact you rarely go much beyond the halfway point,
is one of the old Ace Doubles: two novellas back to back. You
finish one, then turn the book over and get a new front cover and a
second novella, also in the front part of the book. You wouldn't
read the back half unless you wanted to read upside-down. [-mrl]
===================================================================
4. Boris Sidyuk, an MT VOID reader in Kiev sends us the following
messages.
From: ANSIBLE 91, FEBRUARY 1995 (published by Dave Langford)
Back issues are available as follows....
* FTP: ftp://ftp.dcs.gla.ac.uk/pub/SF-Archives/Ansible
* Gopher: gopher://gopher.dcs.gla.ac.uk/pub/SF-Archives/Ansible
* Web: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/SF-Archives/Ansible
THE E-MAIL OF THE SPECIES
British Fantasy Society, bfs@pavilion.co.uk
British SF Association (general enquiries), bsfa@ansible.demon.co.uk
British SF Association (_Matrix_ newsletter),
Chris.Terran@chaos.centron.com
Confabulation, confab@moose.demon.co.uk
Lucy Huntzinger, HUNTZINGER@phyv02.phy.vanderbilt.edu
Jackie McRobert, jackie@soren.demon.co.uk
Picocon, icsf@ic.ac.uk
Ian Sorensen, ian@soren.demon.co.uk
The Scottish Convention, intersection@smof.demon.co.uk
THE WEB OF THE CHOZEN
_Ansible_ ... as above
Hugo awards list, http://www.lm.com/~lmann/awards/hugos/hugos.html
ICSF and Picocon, http://www.ph.ic.ac.uk/moontg/
Nebula awards list, http://www.lm.com/~lmann/awards/nebulas/nebulas.html
The Scottish Convention, http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/intersection
The Scottish Convention science programme, http://www.hq.eso.org/~dclement/items.html
I hope this info will help you and improve new contacts.
THE MT VOID Page 4
Evelyn's Boskone report said, "From the audience, Kate Pott asked
about foreign films, of which she mentioned SOLARIS and ALPHAVILLE,
to which Kimmel added LA JETEE, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, and ORPHEUS,
as well as the Czech animated films THE FABULOUS ADVENTURES OF
BARON MUNCHAUSEN and THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE." Boris
adds about international films: "I would add KIN-DZA-DZA directed
by Georgy Danelia (Mosfilm film studio, Moscow, 1986) and dilogy of
Richard Victorov MOSCOW-CASSIOPEE and TEENAGERS IN SPACE (Gorky
film studio, Moscow, 1975) as well as THE ANDROMEDA NEBULA
(Dovzhenko film studio, Kiev) based on the classic Soviet SF novel
by Ivan Yefremov. Okay, see the list of Soviet SF movies I'm going
to send with my comments."
===================================================================
5. SLIDERS (Fox Television, 22 Mar 95, 2:00) (a television review
by Evelyn C. Leeper):
I thought Step 'n' Fetchit was dead, so Fox must have hired his
son.
*Whatever* were they thinking of?!
I mean, I haven't seen such derogatory racial stereotyping since
GONE WITH THE WIND. While SLIDERS is not as bad as THE BIRTH OF A
NATION, I cannot understand how Fox executives let this get shown.
But I'm supposedly reviewing this as an alternate history show, so
let me cover that aspect first.
Quinn Mallory (played by Jerry O'Connell) is a college student who
just happens to have built a machine that will let him travel to
alternate worlds. (His parallel in one of those worlds also seems
to have built one, but also to have been married for two years.
I'm not sure this is entirely consistent.) After some initial (and
fairly boring) set-up of the characters, Mallory and his companions
travel jump through the "gateway." These companions include Wade
Wells (played by Sabrina Lloyd), his co-worker at the local
computer store, and the "love interest"; Maximilian Arturo (played
by John Rhys-Davies playing John Rhys-Davies), his college physics
professor (now isn't that convenient?); and Rembrandt Brown (played
by Cleavant Derricks), a soul singer who happens to be passing by
Mallory's house and who gets sucked into the wormhole by accident.
Actually, this is jumping ahead a bit. Mallory first makes a test
jump. At first everything seems the same, and he thinks he has
failed, but then we start to see and hear differences (he's a bit
slower on the uptake): the car radio is AM only and is talking
about global cooling, Mexico complaining about illegal immigrants
from the United States, and how the last CD is rolling off the
THE MT VOID Page 5
line, having been displaced by vinyl. The radio says that Jack
Kennedy is not running for another term, and the announcer says if
he woke up every morning next to Marilyn he wouldn't either. (Does
this mean Kennedy wasn't elected until 1992? He would have been 75
at the time, and 78 now.) Mallory sees a billboard announcing
Elvis is performing in Las Vegas. He gets honked at and yelled at
because here, it turns out, red lights mean go and green mean stop.
He goes home to discover that his mother is pregnant by the man who
in the original world is their gardener. Just then, the timer runs
out, and he pops back to the original world.
After this, his doppelganger shows up, tells him how all this works
(YACC [Yet Another Convenience/Coincidence]), tells him about
worlds where the Cubs won three World Series in a row, or where no
one is afraid, warns him about the timer (but the words are
incoherent due to the noise of the wormhole), and leaves.
Anyway, Mallory and company pop through and find themselves in a
San Francisco going through another Ice Age. Mallory's house is
deserted, but a photograph left behind (showing a surprisingly
summery scene for an Ice Age) shows him that in this world his dog
didn't run away and he had a sister. A tornado suddenly starts
bearing down on them and despite the warnings about timer, Mallory
resets the timer to get them out of there right away.
Again, they end up someplace that looks like home. Surprise,
surprise, it's not. Instead of Lincoln's statue on campus, there's
one of Lenin. (For that matter, what's the Berkeley campus doing
in Golden Gate Park?) The telephone operator says, "PT&T, we want
you back," and talks about their "Comrades Call Comrades" program.
(The show goes in entirely too much for this sort of silliness.)
Brown, who was supposed to sing the national anthem at a Giants'
game, finds that the baseball team is the Reds and the anthem is
the Soviet anthem. The ranting Socialist sidewalk speaker from the
original world is now a candidate for the Senate.
As we eventually find out, in this world, the Sino-Soviet bloc won
the Korean War and went on to take southeast Asia and Europe. So
why does the reference to the Berlin Wall seem to make sense to a
member of the resistance? And why does Arturo say Communism is
almost extinct in our world? Maybe the original world isn't our
world after all. (Having the Berkeley campus in Golden Gate Park
might indicate this as well.) But that's too subtle for this show.
More likely the writers don't think China, North Korea, or Cuba
count. The American flag we see later has fifty stars--does this
mean the United States takeover was after 1960?
But before that we're treated to some more terrible
characterization in a scene in a giant interrogation warehouse (at
least this is visually interesting, if not very logical), where we
discover that Brown died in the Detroit Uprising of fifteen years
THE MT VOID Page 6
earlier, and that the sleazy television lawyer we saw in the
original world is now a government interrogator.
There's also money that looks like ours, but red instead of green
and with Krushchev's (?) picture on it. There's some really stupid
rap music, a parody of a public television fund drive, and Judge
Wapner running the "People's Court." (I said this was silly,
didn't I?) But if this is a Soviet-run country, why does the oath
in court end with, "so help me, God"?
Our team connects up with the Underground (how convenient that
Wells just happens to be the Underground leader here--YACC) and
convinces them that they really do come from a parallel universe
(yeah, sure). Arturo's counterpart just happens to be in charge of
the prison where Brown is being kept (YACC), so getting him out is
a lot easier than it should be.
Eventually the team reunites and goes back to where the wormhole
dropped them off (Golden Gate Park--even they don't know why it
wasn't at Mallory's house), with the help of a slide rule that
Arturo just happens to carry (YACC). So they return to the
original world ... or at least think they do, until Mallory's
father, dead in the original, walks through the door.
Next week: Mallory goes to a world that he (or his doppelganger)
has infected with the plague.
Between the silliness, the coincidences, and the stereotypes, this
is every bit as bad as TIME TUNNEL used to be. (And Don Sakers
recently described that by saying, "The good thing about TIME
TUNNEL was that its scientific inaccuracies were more than
overwhelmed by its historical inaccuracies.") In addition, it
seems to be "heavily influenced" by George R. R. Martin's unsold
DOORWAYS, which also had "doorways" into alternate worlds. And
oddly enough, Martin reports that the creator of SLIDERS is a
writer whose agent once approached Martin asking about a staff
position on DOORWAYS; the agent said the writer had read Martin's
script and "loved" the idea. Of course, this could be just another
coincidence....
I suppose as an alternate history junkie I will keep watching this,
but I can't recommend it to anyone not specifically interested in
that sub-genre.
[By the way, Stepin Fetchit's real name was Lincoln Perry. He was
born in 1902, and yes, he is dead--he died in 1985. He and the
other bad stereotype I referred to--Butterfly McQueen--were
actually in a movie together: AMAZING GRACE, in 1974.] [-ecl]
===================================================================
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6. Boskone 32 (con report by Evelyn C. Leeper) (part 4 of 4 parts)
The Forgotten Anthologist of the 40's and 50's
Sunday, 11 AM
Jim Mann (mod), Darrell Schweitzer, Ben Yalow
This would have been better titled "The Forgotten Anthologist*s* of
the 40's and 50's," since it was about the entire set of people
doing anthologies rather than just Groff Conklin (who was certainly
the person *I* thought of when I heard the title).
The panelists began by announcing that Ballantine/Del Rey had
decided to reprint several of its "Best of Author X" series,
including the one for Henry Kuttner. (This means that NESFA will
be dropping their plans for a Kuttner collection, since their goal
is to bring back into print stories and authors that are not
available elsewhere.) The panelists also drifted into discussing
posthumous stories, and a discussion of L. Ron Hubbard. The
panelists all said he could write fast enough to have written all
the books published over his name, and Schweitzer said the real
proof that they were written by Hubbard is that they stopped
(unlike the V. C. Andrews books).
But they eventually did get back to the topic--more or less. They
talked a bit about the "Instant Remainder Anthology Boom" that we
are going through: the whole series of "100 {adjective} Little
{noun meaning stories}" available from Barnes & Noble. There is
also the "Greenberg Phenomenon," which bears a superficial
resemblance to the "Conklin Phenomenon" of the 1950s, but is quite
different. Conklin was both the creative force and the businessman
behind his anthologies, while Martin H. Greenberg serves only the
latter function, selling the idea to a publisher and making all the
rights and royalties arrangements. His co-editor(s) provide the
creative work and editorial direction.
After Conklin in the 1950s, there was Robert Silverberg, who was
described as "the Groff Conklin of the 1960s."
In the early days, however, there were three distinct anthology
forms being developed. The first was the "year's best" which
covered either a single magazine (F&SF, GALAXY, and so on), or the
field in general (such as those edited by Everett Franklin Bleiler
and T. E. Dikty, or by Judith Merril). There was the general
anthology (such as was done by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis
McComas with ADVENTURES IN TIME AND SPACE [1946], or, most notably,
by Groff Conklin). And then there were the anthologies of new
works (such as those done by Damon Knight [ORBIT], Terry Carr
[UNIVERSE], and Robert Silverberg [ALPHA]).
Several of the early anthologies which are now classics were
listed: Orson Welles's INVASION OF MARS, Philip Van Doren Stern's
THE MT VOID Page 8
MIDNIGHT TRAVELLER (should this be THE MIDNIGHT READER or THE
MOONLIGHT TRAVELER instead?), Phil Stong's 25 MODERN STORIES OF
MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION [THE OTHER WORLDS] (1941), Donald
A. Wollheim's POCKET BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION (1943), Herbert
A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser's GREAT TALES OF TERROR AND THE
SUPERNATURAL (1944), Anthony Boucher's TREASURY OF GREAT SCIENCE
FICTION (1959), and John W. Campbell's BEST OF ASTOUNDING. Most of
these are out of print, though some are not difficult to find in
used book stores, as they were very widely distributed in their
time. For anthologies covering an even earlier period, Schweitzer
recommended Christine Campbell Thompson's NOT AT NIGHT series,
which covers the 1920s horror field. Schweitzer suggested that
people who were going to Britain for the Worldcon might have better
luck there, though he warned that while the stories are
historically important, they are not very readable.
There was also discussion of contemporary versus retrospective
anthologies. Until David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer's ASCENT OF
WONDER, no one had done a really substantial retrospective
anthology since Boucher in 1959 and before that, Healy and McComas
in 1946, almost fifty years ago! There is some feeling that
Hartwell and Cramer are trying to rewrite the history of the field,
and certainly their definition of what is hard science fiction has
aroused much debate, but their achievement is certainly
indisputable.
The panelists also explained the difference between the "Bad Martin
Greenberg" and the "Good Martin Greenberg." The "Good Martin
Greenberg" goes by the names "Martin Harry Greenberg" and "Martin
H. Greenberg" to distinguish himself from the "Bad Martin
Greenberg," an anthologist and editor of the 1950s who had a
tendency not to pay authors for their work. In fact, when the
"Good Martin Greenberg" started putting together anthologies, he
got no response to the letters he sent to authors asking for
stories, and was quite puzzled by this until someone explained that
his name was like a giant warning flag. He has apparently cleared
up the confusion since then.
Other anthologies of note include Ben Bova's and Robert
Silverberg's HALL OF FAME anthologies, Sam Moskowitz's SCIENCE
FICTION BY GASLIGHT, and James Gunn's ROAD TO WONDER series.
Interview with Fred Lerner
Sunday, 12 N
Tony Lewis (mod), Fred Lerner
Lewis introduced Lerner as "a gentleman and a scholar," and said
that Lerner was one of the founders of the Science Fiction Research
Association, which Lerner said was not conceived as an academic
organization, but as a "sercon" (serious and constructive)
organization to bring together academics and fans to learn about
THE MT VOID Page 9
each other work and techniques. For example, Tony Lewis pointed
out that there are a lot of amateur bibliographers among science
fiction fans.
When Lerner was in library school, every term paper he wrote had
something in it about science fiction. And science fiction tied to
in a lot--he cites the case of the class on ancient bookbinding
techniques which talked about an eighteenth century French binding
technique called "deux-a-deux" in which two books were bound
together, back to back. Sound familiar?
Lerner's doctoral dissertation (of which his book MODERN SCIENCE
FICTION AND THE AMERICAN LITERARY COMMUNITY is a "retelling in
English") led to some interesting situations. First, he requested
and got Lester Del Rey as the fifth examiner, and said that when
everyone arrived it was probably the first time that half the
examing board was asking another member for his autograph. Then
later when the board was questioning Lerner about the sources for
his claim that all the good science fiction written in the 1950s
found a market, Del Rey said, "Fred's right," and Lerner
immediately asked him if he could cite Del Rey as a reference--
which he did.
Lerner reminisced about his early introduction to science fiction
(MISS PICKERELL GOES TO MARS, Tom Corbett books, and science
fiction on television). When he first read Robert Heinlein at age
eleven he hated it, but when he returned to Heinlein at age
fourteen, he discovered he liked Heinlein's books after all.
Rudyard Kipling is a particularly favorite author of Lerner's (who
has written articles for a special Kipling issue of NIEKAS), but
when he first started reading Kipling books from the library and
found them very different from each other, he was "confused by the
fact that so many different writers had the same name."
Most recently, Lerner has been reviewing science fiction in the
WILSON LIBRARY BULLETIN and also in the VOICE OF YOUTH ADVOCATES,
in a column aimed at "young adult librarians" (those are librarians
who purchase books for young adults, not librarians just out of
school). "YA librarians," observed Lerner, "have an obligation to
be knowledgeable about science fiction even if they have no
personal interest in the subject." However, though he reviews
science fiction and fantasy for the WILSON LIBRARY BULLETIN, he
does not review horror, because he has no interest and (more
importantly) no expertise in the field.
As a tip for authors, Lerner says that when a reviewer needs to do
six books a month and the deadline is looming, s/he will opt for a
shorter book rather than a long one. So shorter books are more
likely to be reviewed.
THE MT VOID Page 10
In addition to his interest in Kipling, Lerner has written articles
for NIEKAS on Austin Tappan Wright's ISLANDIA for the Wright
Centennial and on John Myer Myer's SILVERLOCK. The latter article
was a set of annotations on the literary references in SILVERLOCK,
and Lerner said he was happy that the issue came out before Myers's
death, although he said he did not ask Myers for help on it,
"because that would have taken some of the fun out of it." (I
suggested that if SILVERLOCK was not in print, perhaps NESFA could
reprint it--with Lerner's annotations.)
Regarding SILVERLOCK, Lerner said he once found a copy inscribed,
"To Jim Putnam: You already have your own keys to the Commonwealth
[of Letters]; these are mine." (The phrase "Commonwealth of
Letters" comes from Moliere.)
Lerner is currently working on a history of libraries through the
ages. For example, the earliest known use of a library was a
Babylonian king who kept track of everyone that he had cursed and
what effects his curses had. There was also discovered a
Babylonian database of fossilized sheep livers, presumably as a
teaching aid for augerers. And Lerner promises to reveal who
*really* burned the Library at Alexandria.
Someone asked about famous librarians of history and Lerner said
that the best-known were probably Leibnitz, Casanova, and Jorge
Luis Borges.
Currently Lerner is working with the National Center for Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder doing a bibliographic database of all
material on the subject. Someone asked if he had read ACHILLES IN
VIETNAM, to which he replied "I haven't actually read it, but I've
indexed it." (The Center is located in rural Vermont because when
it was formed, it was decided that Matt Freedman should be the
head, and so it was placed near where he lived.)
Lerner expressed distress that the American Library Association is
spending too much time on politically correct stuff and not enough
on its basic business. He also talked about such issues of the
homeless in the libraries, and said that the problems of the
homeless in the United States are serious, but should be solved by
agencies designed to do that, not by the libraries.
Asked about Project Gutenberg (digitizing all public domain
literature), Lerner said that the obsolescence of digital material
worried him: the classic examples of this are Beta-format
videotapes and 8-track cartridges. Given that in computer backups,
the conclusion is that the best medium for *long*-term storage
(more than twenty years) is high-quality punched paper tape
(because it will last and the equipment to read it is easy to
reconstruct), it may be that high-quality paper is the best
preservation medium for books. But I still think that digitizing
THE MT VOID Page 11
books is better for widespread distribution and usage. (We don't
insist people do their day-to-day computer work with punched paper
tape instead of disk files.)
With All of These Books, Is There Any Room for Short Fiction?
Sunday, 1 PM
David A. Smith (mod), Gregory Feeley,
Tony Lewis, Darrell Schweitzer
While the panelists started out by saying that it is easier for a
new writer to sell short fiction than a novel (short fiction
appears in a magazine with other works and doesn't have to stand or
fall on its own, so editors are more willing to take a chance on
it), there is also a negative trend in the current glut of theme
anthologies.
Although the peak of the science fiction magazine (at least in
terms of volume) came in October 1952 when there were fifty
magazines on the newsstand, we are currently in a mini-boom, and
the number of pieces of short fiction published last year is
probably close to, and may even exceed, the number of novels.
But a lot of the market for these are in things like shared worlds
anthologies, mosaic novels, and theme anthologies, of which the
ultimate will apparently be ALTERNATE VAMPIRES, according to
Schweitzer. Theme anthologies are seen as acting as kudzu, eating
up space and budget that could be spent on "good" anthologies.
(This argument would be more convincing to me if I actually thought
that there *would* be more "good" anthologies if there weren't
these theme anthologies. But I didn't see any trend in that
direction before these came along.)
The panelists also felt that the current theme anthologies degrade
the concept of the original anthology, which used to be more
general (such as Damon Knight's ORBIT series). By contrast, the
current crop has very specific focuses (e.g., fantastic amphibians)
which mean that authors are writing much more to specification and
much less what they want to write, and that stories authors do
write that don't fit these themes have much less chance of getting
published.
Also, anthologies used to carry a certain guarantee of quality for
the stories included--you got a dozen stories, all of high quality.
Now you get thirty stories, but the quality is much more variable-
-because the stories are written for a specific market and by
invitation, the editors have more tendency to accept a story of
lower quality because they know the author, who wrote it at their
request, will have difficulty selling it elsewhere.
The panelists also objected to many editors' attitudes towards the
stories in these anthologies, treating the stories more as
THE MT VOID Page 12
commodities than art. For example, Feeley said he had resistance
to his "Aweary of the Sun" in WEIRD TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE (the
best story in the book, in my opinion), because it was so much
longer than the rest of the stories. Short stories seem in general
to be getting shorter, while novels are getting longer.
(As far as numbered anthologies, one of the panelists said they
usually falter around number four.)
Speaking of shortness, or lack thereof, in novels, this was also
discussed. Novels used to be a lot shorter, but once a couple of
long novels were successful, editors were more willing to accept
longer manuscript. It was compared to breaking the sound barrier,
with the barrier being 200 pages, then 300 pages, and so on. (Now
the barrier seems to be somewhere around 800 pages.) Another
factor is ego inflation: when an author becomes popular enough,
editors cannot or will not suggest that they should cut some of the
excess verbiage. (Stephen King is the classic example of this,
which proves this is true in the mainstream as well.)
I noted that there are also shorter books being published, books
that are novellas rather than novel. Feeley said the mainstream
examples are people like Robert James Waller and Jonathan Bach,
whose books are what Feeley referred to as "nouvelle cuisine"
books. However, while we may see thin science fiction books, the
panelists thought there are far fewer thin fantasy books. (I'm not
sure. I get a lot of relatively thin fantasy books as review
copies, but maybe they're not making it into the stores.)
And before you complain about the current trend of bloated novels,
just remember that the old novel VARNEY THE VAMPIRE is about
900,000 words long, or about four times the length of DUNE.
The panelists closed by exhorting the audience to write more short
fiction and send it to magazines.
Miscellaneous
The newsletter came out on time, but the fourth (and final?) issue
was on legal-sized paper instead of the letter-sized paper used for
the others, making life difficult for those of us who save these
sorts of things.
Next year for Boskone 33 (February 16-18, 1995) the Guest of Honor
is Lois McMaster Bujold. (This is a welcome return to science
fiction after a couple of years emphasizing fantasy, at least as
far as I am concerned. Give me rivets or give me death!) [-ecl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3F-434 908-957-5619
m.r.leeper@att.com
A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.
-- James Reston